Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics
Charles University, Czech Republic
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
How learning and use shape evolving linguistic systems
Languages persist through a cycle of learning and use - we learn the language of our community through immersion in that language, and in using that language to meet our communicative goals we generate more linguistic data which others learn from in turn. In previous work we have used agent-based computational models and experimental methods from psycholinguistics to simulate this process and show how biases in learning and use can explain some of the fundamental structural features shared by all languages. For example, the fact that languages exploit regular compositional rules for generating meaningful expressions allows languages to be relatively learnable but also exceptionally powerful tools for communication, and we can show that this structure arises naturally as languages adapt to the constraints from learning and use inherent in their transmission. In this talk I’ll review these older findings, then talk about more recent work using the same approach to identify the mechanisms responsible for some other cross-linguistically frequent configurations, in particular teasing apart the contribution of distinct pressures from learning and use in creating frequency-irregularity correlations in inflectional systems and recursive numeral systems.
*** The talk will be delivered in person (MFF UK, Malostranské nám. 25, 4th floor, room S1) and will be streamed via Zoom. For details how to join the Zoom meeting, please write to sevcikova et ufal.mff.cuni.cz ***
I am the Director of the Centre for Language Evolution in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. I use computational and experimental methods to study the evolution of language and the human capacity for language. I am particularly interested in how languages are shaped by their repeated learning and use, and how this cultural evolutionary process in turn shapes the cognitive capacities underpinning language learning. I completed an MA in Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence in 1998, then an MSc in Cognitive Science in 1999, before doing my PhD 1999-2003, all at the University of Edinburgh. After various postdoctoral positions, I took my first faculty position in Psychology at Northumbria University in 2006, before returning to Edinburgh as a lecturer in 2010 and being promoted to professor in 2016.